With “Transformers: The Ride-3D” now open at Universal Studios Hollywood, film franchise director Michael Bay stopped by the ride and spoke with The LA Times about his plans for his fourth — and, as he stated recently final — Transformers film, set to hit theaters on June 27, 2014.

“It’s not a reboot,” Bay said, reiterating that the new film will have an all-new cast. “That’s maybe the wrong word. I don’t want to say ‘reboot’ because then people will think we’re doing a ‘Spider-Man’ and starting from the beginning. We’re not. We’re taking the story that you’ve seen — the story we’ve told in three movies already — and we’re taking it in a new direction. But we’re leaving those three as the history. It all still counts… We’re moving on to something different.”

Though the script, currently being drafted by Ehren Kruger, is not yet final, Bay hints that one place the fourth film may go is into outer space.

“That feels like the way to go, doesn’t it?” says Bay. “I want to go a little off [the planet] but I don’t want to go too sci-fi. I still want to keep it grounded.”

No matter what, Bay says that one element of the new production is to scale back the budget somewhat to around $165 million, about $30 million less than 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Speaking of smaller scale, Bay recently wrapped his dark crime comedy Pain and Gain for the studio. Starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, it follows a group of bodybuilders who engaged in a campaign of kidnapping, extortion and murder in Florida.